


Partner

by bonusparts



Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25243969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonusparts/pseuds/bonusparts
Summary: Dawn was different. She understood the chaos inside of him. Embraced it. Loved it. Loved him. Hank loved her, too. But the big, dumb tough guy front he put on – Hawk – kept getting in the way.[Warning: I'm trash for these two. Follows TV Titans continuity and relationships, with a little bit of the Chaos and Order comic book Hawk and Dove thrown in.]
Relationships: Dawn Granger/Hank Hall
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9





	Partner

The dark bar on B Street sat mostly empty, but that was to be expected at two in the afternoon on a comfortably cool Tuesday. Even the late and long lunch drones had returned to their jobs in the shops and offices through the city, leaving behind the bar’s Jack Daniels and out-of-date jukebox whose catalog was full of sentimental songs that hadn’t been popular since his mom had been a teenager. Hank Hall had no job to return to, though. Not one that required punching a clock, anyway. Punching other things, sure. It was what he was good at. It was what he was made for. At least, that’s what he’d thought…until he’d met Dawn.

He raised his hand toward Charley, who ambled behind the bar like a loose-limbed, out-of-place beach bum. “One more,” Hank said, indicating the shot glass next to his half-gone beer.

Charley eyed him dubiously. “You don’t think you’ve had enough, dude?”

Hank sent him a glare under his brows. “I’ll tell you when I’ve had enough,” he grumbled, and tapped his finger against the hardwood for emphasis.

The bartender shrugged, poured another measly two ounces of Jack, and muttered, “It’s your liver.”

Hank fished a five-dollar bill from his wallet and set it on the bar. “Keep the change.”

Charley scowled. “There’s no change from this.”

“Then why are you still standing here?” Hank challenged. The bartender wisely took his money and went without another word.

Hank sighed wearily through his nose. He picked up the shot, knocked it back in a gulp, and breathed in a hiss to cool the inside of his lips. The cuts inside his mouth still stung, from where his teeth had sliced the tender flesh during his last fight. Even twerp perps got lucky, sometimes.

As he set the glass down again, some trick of the bar’s dim, uneven light made the bruised skin of his knuckles almost glow up at him in an angry bluish hue. He swallowed and rubbed his thumb over it, thinking of Dawn.

Why did he have to open his big fucking mouth and start in on her and Dick? It was a long time ago, a fleeting thing. So, she and Dick had fucked. He’d fucked other people, too. Not since he and Dawn had gotten back together, of course, and not that he hadn’t thought about it from time to time: Donna was hot, and for a cougar, Rita Farr was a good-looking woman who probably knew a lot of kinky shit. But Dawn was…different. She understood the chaos inside of him. Embraced it. Loved it. Loved him. Hank loved her, too. But the big, dumb tough guy front he put on – Hawk – kept getting in the way.

He’d tried. God damn, how he’d tried! With the longing looks and the quiet kisses, the light strokes of his fingers and the fervent thrust of his cock. The last time he and Dawn had had sex, she’d been sweating and laughing in his lap, her breasts bouncing against his cheek, and had come with a little coo of his name like a dove might make. She’d said it then – “I love you” – and he’d whispered it, too, around the slippery clutch of their lips.

Why couldn’t he be _that guy_ all of the time, instead of constantly lapsing back into the hard-headed, paranoid, loudmouthed idiot who couldn’t just let the past be the past?

“Hey, good looking.”

Hank raised his head and looked to his right. Dawn had slid onto the stool beside his. Even in her hoodie and jeans, she was angelic, her platinum-colored hair like a halo and her smile as kind as any saint’s.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, and she snapped a quick blink over the bar.

Hank frowned at the bartender. “Fucking traitor.”

“You’re welcome, asshole,” Charley replied before moving away.

Hank shook his head, then turned to Dawn with a wan smile. “Buy you a drink?”

She hummed. “How about we skip the drinks part and go straight to me taking you home.”

He snickered to himself. “You sure you want that?”

Beneath the overhang of the bar, her hand touched his knee and stayed there. “I want you,” she said, her voice not much louder than a breath.

He dropped his hand under the bar, too, and grasped her fingers. He swallowed thickly and muttered, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

“You said what you were thinking,” Dawn replied in her no-nonsense Dove voice. “But you don’t need to worry about that. I’m not with Dick.”

“I know.”

“I’m with you.”

“I know,” he said emphatically again, as a reminder to himself and to the idiot inside.

“Then remember that,” Dawn said. She scooted closer to him and placed her other hand on his cheek, drawing his face toward hers. “We’re partners, Hank. You know what that means, right?”

He nodded. “I’m yours. And you’re mine.”

She smiled again, still sublime. “In everything.”

He wanted to kiss her then, to take her in his arms and hold her so tight like they’d do when they were in bed and good and truly together. But they were still in the bar, and even though nobody there would have made any look or comment about them having a moment, he just smiled and cocked his head toward the door and said:

“You want to get out of here?”

“Yeah,” she said, sliding from her stool. “I do.”

They walked out of the bar each with an arm around the other. On the way back to the apartment, they talked some more, about mistakes and shortcomings and hopes for being better. But once at home in the safety of their love nest, they traded words for kisses and clothes for a condom and had make-up sex as glorious as their first time together.

When they’d cleaned up from both the sex and the traditional afterglow ice cream, Dawn lay snuggled against his side, running her fingers along his chest in the lazy way she liked to do, and Hank had to wonder:

“What’d you see in him?”

Dawn’s fingers paused in their trailing. Then her body moved in a graceful all-over shrug. “He was Robin, the Boy Wonder.”

“That’s it?” Hank asked. What was so great about being Batman’s sidekick? Aside from being _Batman_ ’s sidekick, of course.

“And he’s got a nice butt,” she added.

Hank groaned and shifted away in a dramatic overdoing of it.

Dawn laughed. “Not as nice as yours!”

He put his arm back around her and kissed her crown. “Fucking-A,” he murmured into her hair.

She laughed again and returned to snuggling. She didn’t resume her trailing, though, but hugged him around his chest with one strong but slender arm. “I didn’t want to get too close to you,” she said softly. “I thought it would be a bad idea for us to work together and be together, too. I hadn’t realized yet how much better we are this way.”

“I am, anyway,” Hank said.

Dawn gave him a squeeze. “We both are.” She craned her head up to face him. “That’s why I’m your partner.”

He smiled down at her. “And I’m yours.” He turned in the bed and slipped both arms around her, bowing his head so their faces nearly touched, and said, “I mean that, you know. I am. Yours.”

“I’m yours, too,” she said, and reached up to kiss him.

They came together again in a warm and tender hug full of forgiveness and faith in each other. Outside, twilight descended. And while nighttime was the time of their kind, there’d be no patrol, no fights, no conflict tonight. Tonight, Hank wanted to be with Dawn, his partner.


End file.
